News

Keeping Classrooms Cool

Related Tags:

(Las Vegas, KXNT)- Sweaty students shoved into an overcrowded classroom may sound bad enough, but now add a broken air conditioner to the mix and you have a recipe for disaster.

It’s a common occurrence within the Clark County School District as they battle decades-old cooling systems that are hanging on for dear life. Maintenance crews are visiting these aged air conditioning units to give them a tune up before the first day of school. Still, no matter how much scraping and power washing is done, electrical coordinator Jack Viscosi says there’s no guarantee a system won’t fail.

” I can guarantee you that all of them will not be working up to par. We don’t have crystal balls and some of this equipment will fail, but I can guarantee we are ready for it. When they do fail, we have the manpower to jump on it and get it going just as soon as possible, ” stressed Viscosi.

While replacing the equipment may seem like the easy solution, Viscosi says it’s unrealistic.

“These are not your residential home units. They are massive cooling systems. To replace just the chiller is a quarter of a million dollars, ” said Viscosi. ” Then when you try to get it installed with all of the peripheral equipment, you are talking a million…a million and a half.”

Preventative maintenance is all that can be done, but even that has taken a hit with cuts to the maintenance staff.

A Clark County School District spokesperson says there is still 1998 bond money left. The school board will be discussing where that money needs to be used. They continue to discuss if they will ask the public to approve another bond in 2016.